Three-time Oscar nominee Diane Ladd dies at 89

Diane Ladd, a three-time Academy Award nominee and actor of rare timing and intensity whose roles ranged from the brash waitress in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore to the scheming parent in Wild at Heart, has died at 89.

Ladd’s death was announced on Monday by daughter Laura Dern, who issued a statement saying her mother and occasional co-star died at her home in Ojai, California, with Dern at her side.

Dern, who called Ladd her “amazing hero” and “profound gift of a mother”, did not immediately cite a cause of death.

“She was the greatest daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, artiste and empathetic spirit that only dreams could have seemingly created,” Dern wrote.

“We were blessed to have her. She is flying with her angels now.” A gifted comic and dramatic performer, Ladd had a long career in television and on stage before breaking through as a film performer in Martin Scorsese’s 1974 release Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.

She earned an Oscar nomination for supporting actor for her turn as the acerbic, straight-talking Flo, and went on to appears in dozens of movies over the following decades.

Actress Diane Ladd.
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REUTERS

Her many credits included Chinatown, Primary Colors and two other movies for which she received best supporting nods, Wild at Heart and Rambling Rose, both of which co-starred her daughter.

She also continued to work in television, with appearances in ]ER, Touched by Angel and Alice, the spinoff from Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, among others.

Through marriage and blood relations, Ladd was tied to the arts. Tennessee Williams was a second cousin and first husband Bruce Dern, Laura’s father, was himself an Academy Award nominee.

Ladd and Laura Dern achieved the rare feat of mother-and-daughter nominees for their work in Rambling Rose and they also were memorably paired in “Wild at Heart”, a personal favourite of Ladd’s and winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.

In the dark, farcical David Lynch noir, her character, Marietta, is willing to try anything — including murder — to keep her daughter (Laura Dern) away from her ex-con lover, played by Nicolas Cage.

Before Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore“, she had been working in television since the 1950s, when she was in her early 20s, with shows including Perry Mason, Gunsmoke and The Big Valley.

Ladd was married three times, and divorced twice — from Bruce Dern and from William A Shea Jr.